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An Interesting Gardening Glossary

© Eileen O'dea

I have been busy looking up unusual and interesting gardening terms. Some may be familiar, some new, some odd, and all are interesting. So sit back and we'll have some fun with this garden glossary.

Ambrosia- A word normally associated with a fruit salad. In this case, it means Ragweed. Kind of makes you look differently at the sneezey weed.

Awn- A bristle like appendage.

Beaked- Ending in a beak or prolonged tip.

Bleeding- A popular horticultural term applied to the dripping sap from a wound or a cut stub.

Bole- the trunk of a tree. Try referring to a tree trunk that way, and see if anyone knows what you're talking about.

Canescent- Gray, pubescent and hairy plant.

Capitate- Head like, collected in a dense cluster.

Captan- Fungicide which see. Really!

Clum- The stem of a grass or a sedge.

Deltoid- Triangular. Bet you thought I was going to say the mussel of something.

Dentate- With more or less spreading teeth.

Diploid An organism with a chromosome number double that of the normal generation.

Endemic- Native or local.

Escape- A cultivated plant found growing as though wild, dispersed by some thing like the wind or a bird.

Fairy Ring- Term given to a ring of mushrooms. Sounds medieval, doesn't it?

Girdle- To restrict or remove the bark around the stem, or other parts, of plants.

Glomerate- In compact clusters.

Ha-Ha- A ditch wide enough and deep enough to serve as a barrier for animals, built in a way that the edge from which is mostly seen, is slightly higher than the other. This conceals it's presence. I love the name of this one.

Head- A dense cluster or short dense spike of sessile.

Hot Bed- A special bed, in the ground, usually lined with boards or cement, in which the temperature is raised by heat from fermenting manure, steam pipes or electric heating wires.

Latex- The milky juice of a plant such as Milkweed.

Muck- Any kind of impure or decaying peat or black swamp earth, usually moist.

Mule- An old word for a cross between different species; hybrid; or cross breed usually an infertile hybrid.

Orbicular- Circular; rounded in outline.

Ovate- Having a outline of a hen's egg.

Pedicel- The stalk of a flower.

Petaloide- Resembling a petal in shape and or color.

Pome- A fleshy fruit; like an apple or pear.

Pricking off- A horticultural term used when transplanting extremely small seedlings, that are so small they can not be easily moved with the fingers.

Ratoon- A stalk or a sprout of a plant which has come from the base of a perennial plant the second year.